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Surface Runoff Rainwater Harvesting: Perfect Solution

Surface runoff rainwater harvesting involves collecting rainwater in small areas like pits, trenches, and wells to infiltrate it underground and recharge groundwater aquifers. This helps solve problems like water shortages during dry seasons by maintaining groundwater levels, reduces flooding by decreasing surface runoff volume, and alleviates drainage issues in cities. Factors like soil infiltration capacity, recharge area location, and groundwater table depth determine recharge rates. By recharging adequate amounts of water, extraction can be sustained during dry periods while lowering flood levels and urban flooding risks.

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Krishna
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34 views4 pages

Surface Runoff Rainwater Harvesting: Perfect Solution

Surface runoff rainwater harvesting involves collecting rainwater in small areas like pits, trenches, and wells to infiltrate it underground and recharge groundwater aquifers. This helps solve problems like water shortages during dry seasons by maintaining groundwater levels, reduces flooding by decreasing surface runoff volume, and alleviates drainage issues in cities. Factors like soil infiltration capacity, recharge area location, and groundwater table depth determine recharge rates. By recharging adequate amounts of water, extraction can be sustained during dry periods while lowering flood levels and urban flooding risks.

Uploaded by

Krishna
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Surface runoff rainwater harvesting:

Perfect solution
In the previous post I had said that the surface runoff rainwater harvesting will solve
the following problems:

 The water crisis in dry season


 The drainage problem
 The submergence problem in city area
 Reduction in flood level in rivers

To get the idea of these things we must first understand:


What is surface runoff rainwater harvesting?
Rooftop and paved surface rainwater harvesting is not enough for whole year. So it is
very necessary to introduce the artificial recharge methods of rainwater harvesting.
In this method the rainwater is accumulated in a small constricted area like pits,
wells, trenches, shafts etc. and infiltrated under the soil through them. This is the
indirect method of rainwater harvesting so there is no direct gain but in long-term
this is the best method of making water available sufficient under the ground. This
method of rainwater harvesting is also called recharging ground water aquifer.
There are different methods of recharging ground water aquifers. Some of them are:

i) Recharging of bore holes


ii) Recharging through wells
iii) Recharging through pits
iv) Recharging through trenches
v) Recharging through shafts
vi) Recharging making percolation tanks

How does this work?


In this method above mentioned methods can be easily constructed. For example
Recharging through Wells
Well is constructed in such a place that maximum rainwater accumulate to that area.
Or it can be chosen among the abandoned wells for the recharging. Or even wells
can be constructed to recharge the drainage (storm) water i.e. connecting the
drainage pipes to the wells.
But before water enters to the well it is very necessary to filter the water so that
clean water gets recharged and no more sediments will settle inside the well.
For this near the well the filter media is constructed and then the filtered water is
only allowed to enter into the well.
So other methods like pits, holes, trenches also work on the same process.
What factors determines the recharge rates?
Recharge rates is affected by different factors. They are:

1) Infiltration capacity of soil: It is the capacity of soil to allow water inside


it. If infiltration rate of soil is high then maximum amount of water can be
recharged.

2) The location of recharge zone: The recharge zone should be in such a


place that the maximum water gets collected to the place i.e. it has good catchment
area.

3) Ground Water Table: If the ground water table is so high, water will rise
upward instead of recharging. So, GWT should be sufficiently low.
How is it going to solve the problem listed?

1) Water Crisis
We extract a lot of water from different underground source of water like Well, Hand
Pump, boring etc. in dry and wet season. Extracting the water isn't the problem. The
problem is continuous extraction of water without recharging the aquifers. This is
the main reason due to which the Ground Water Table (GWT) is going deeper and
deeper. So recharging the aquifers will do two things. First, it will maintain the
ground water table to a certain depth and second we can extract as much water as
we can.
It is obvious that the discharge will be more than the recharge but this will reduce
the rapid decrease in GWT. So we can extract the water in dry season to the greater
extent if we manage to recharge the water in the same amount. This will help in
solving the water crisis to some extent.

2) Drainage Problems and submergence


Drainage problem is one of the major problems in city area. If there is continuous
rain for about 3-5 hours then the whole city will be submerged and flooded. It’s
because of two things. First is the paved road, pavements, streets, house compound
etc. from which water cannot infiltrate and whole water turns into runoff. Second
are the old and expired drainage pipes of the city area.
So because of these two things we are having problem of drainage and
submergence. So, recharge techniques will solve them by reducing the runoff
volume. Recharging from one or two zone isn't enough to solve the problem. There
should be enough recharge zones through which enough water can be infiltrated.
This will reduce the runoff volume to great extent inside the city area.

3) Reduction of Flood
If the runoff volume is decreased then it’s obvious that the water in the river will
decrease. This will reduce the flood level to some extent. Though very little amount
of water will be infiltrated in comparison to the water that gets accumulated in the
river, it can reduce to some extent

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